Networked computers are used to transmit and fetch information to and from local sources (e.g., computers used in a business) and remote sources (e.g., enterprise services offered over the Internet). To ensure privacy and security during communication between networked computers, authentication and verification mechanisms may be used. Thus, the authentication and verification mechanisms can be used to establish a trusted session between a server and client. The trusted session can be used to manage upgrades for network appliances so that malicious software is less likely to be installed during an upgrade.
Upgrading of system software and applications for many network appliances is often performed using an upgrade patch. Often the upgrades are performed using a sequential series of upgrade patches. For example, a network appliance might be powered down for a long period of time (such as months or perhaps even years) and might not be aware of the patches as they become available. In some cases, software configurations of the network appliances are so out-of-date, that the conventional mechanism for providing a sequential series of upgrade patches cannot be safely applied. In such cases, applying the long series of upgrade patches can cause the network appliance to hang during the upgrade process, and require manual intervention by skilled technicians in order to resolve the problem.